Anyone that works in B2C knows that communication is the key to success. Customer experience is critical or it leads to decreased sales, frustrated customers and bad word of mouth.
It seems like Scopely co-CEO skipped the Communication class, when he did his MBA.
During what seems like forever, the RTS community have asked for better and more dedicated communication from Scopely but little have changed. Then came the #PU letter and suddenly Scopely showed an ability to draft a response that would have made Usian Bolts gold medal in 100 meter track at the Olympics on London look like a snail march.
In that response a firm promise of a Roadmap that would give the community an idea of how Scopely would implement the changes was promised. And since then - radio silence.
Players simply do not know what to expect, what to come, how to plan and how to act or react. We are sitting here waiting for news - craving that vital information that will keep us playing and we get nothing. Nothing from those that are supposed to be accountable but bits and pieces from those that most certainly aren't. If all communication from now on is focused on the Players Council and the rest of the community will have to wait it out - well then you have failed on delivery on one of the most important messages in your own promise - the Roadmap.
And when you fail because you act as usual, then your customers will see that as nothing has changed. Your credibility and any trust you may or may not have gotten is gone as fast as it was build. So right now we are basically back to square one again and to top it up, you have communicated about changes that will be fatal to the game. But since you don't ask or listen to your broader audience how would you know?
I strongly urge you to take charge in communicating with your player community. Show them that they matter even of you can't fulfill their every desire. I recognize you are a business and in it for the money, but much more money is to be found if your customers have fun at the same time.
And stop hiding - this is your game, your customers, your business!
Dear Scopely, why are you afraid of your own customers?
Your customer is always right - even when he isn't
Don't think for a second that you can do what you want if you want success. First impression matters and if your customer is met with arrogance, ignorance or even worse silence, he will eventually take his business elsewhere and most likely also tell anyone to not shop with you.
So how is Scopely performing when it comes to this? Well we all know how Customer Support is less than helpful, in many cases don't understand your issue and doesn't try hard to try and figure out what your problem is. Sure some people use foul language but in most cases it is driven by previous experience - that support simply aren't worth anything.
If customers was met with a positive attitude dialogue about the issue would run so much smoother and the chance of a successful solution is much more likely. Even when an issue can't be solved, if the customer feels that he is treated well and taken seriously, even a non solution can have a positive outcome.
What about the Community Managers then? Well the same applies really although the difference is that appearance becomes visible to a much wider audience. A CM acts on behalf of the company he represents, and his actions/behavior is a direct way for customers to get a firsthand impression of a company's values when it comes to customer care.
If a CM is more or less invisible or is being arrogant towards customers, there is a direct line to the company's communication and customer care strategy. I can't really tell if their behavior is due to the lack of importance on this subject at Scopely's or if it's simply because they are understaffed and overwhelmed.
To me it seems like Scopely have chosen the "We don't really care about our customers" strategy. The support function is useless most of the times and clearly not updated on what is going on in the game. The CM's tries to answer - once they are around - but there is no clear line in what is communicated. Or how its communicated - or where. Its a hot mess.
Don't get me wrong - I am not really shooting at either support or the community managers. They work with the lines that are drawn up by management.
Transparency and Accuracy is a must when communicating
When communication is transparent and accurate it builds trust. It's as simple as that. And if your customers don't trust you, you are fighting a lost battle.
Poor communication can lead to decisions made on false accusations or simple lack of knowledge. If you don't really know what your customers want because you either don't listen, don't communicate your plans and aren't providing a transparent environment when it comes to changes, then you risk making the wrong decision. At least when it comes to how this is perceived with the customers. Get this Scopely?
And what is even worse, is how you share information with your customers. It is so random that you can be sure you aren't effectively reaching your customers. And it doesn't look like there is any sort of internal coordination when it comes to communicating. Why isn't in-game tools used to inform players about important changes and upcoming updates? Why is region transfer mentioned on Line only and not on forums? Why is it that it seems more and more like you prefer to keep players in the dark by spreading out communication to various platforms, often not aligned and complete.
Lets use region transfers as an example on lack of transparency:
On June 13th Scopely announces that a change in region transfer will be implemented.
"Last year we rolled out the Region Transfer feature in Road to Survival that allowed players and factions to transfer from one region to another. The intent of region transfer was to allow players and factions the opportunity to move to different regions to play with friends and to seek new competitive experiences.
What we’ve seen and heard from the community was that the frequency at which people transfer between regions is causing disruption to the tight-knit communities that exist within regions. We are also observing that some factions are moving to regions to seek unfair competitive advantages, which undermines the ability to create balanced matchmaking, especially for Cross Region War"
"We believe these changes to region transfer will allow for better event regulation, fairer competition amongst players and factions, and improve the overall health of all regions. It will also allow players to benefit from better event planning and more consistent activity scheduling in the game. We will be actively monitoring this latest iteration to region transfer and bring in further tweaks if necessary.
Please transfer to your desired region prior to the region locking on July 5th."
Oh well, people weren't happy with this but it seemed like an okay change to most. Don't disrupt the game on a regular basis and allow people to play as they like (which I'm assuming is why most is playing). The players knew that transfers in the future would be limited to certain periods although you probably should have been a bit more transparent about what was about to come.
On June 30th Scopely announces the new event "Tournament of Champions"
"We’ve identified 40 regions (below) that are eligible to qualify for The Tournament of Champions. Performance during the All Out War qualifying event matters, as qualification for the tournament is not guaranteed just by being on one of these regions...
"Region transfers will become available for most regions again from July 1st - July 5th. After this window, as previously announced, please expect that region transfer will not become available for approximately 8 weeks. (subject to change)."
Uhm wait now....wasn't the change to transfer made to not disrupt the knit-tight communities that exist in regions? Or was the change really done as preparation for your new ToC event? The players asked this numerous times, but Scopely stayed silent about intentions. They even stayed silent about ToC content so players had very little time to make a decision to transfer blindly. Both those that actively wanted to participate in ToC but also those that didn't but just wanted a new region to play or to go play with friends, take a break or slow down for various reasons. It wasn't exactly building trust...
ToC could have a blog post on it's own in terms of bad communication :-)
On August 31st Scopely announce "Upcoming Region Transfer details"
"We wanted to announce upcoming openings for region transfers. Beginning on September 5th, select groupings of regions will have transfers enabled for 48-hour windows in order to minimize progress lost on stashes and mission events. Please note that players that choose to transfer during this time will have their Login stash reset. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this causes.
Our goal with region transfers is to allow players to freely choose where they play while protecting weaker regions from disproportionate power imbalances. Due to the reset of stashes and mission events that region transfers entail, we also seek to minimize disruption of players’ progress for each"
And then follows a long line of rules that can be read on the forum post.
Uhm wait again....did you just change the conditions again? I'm sure those that transferred last time would have liked to know this. Huge efforts have been made by most factions trying to recruit new players as they have lost players along the ToC road. And with the rules setup it isn't really freely is it? I understand that you are still obliged to protect the weaker regions and with good right, but the lack of transparency leave a large proportion of the player base stuck where they are. And let's not mention that we pay coins to transfer.
If the goal is to soft merge the regions just tell us that! That is not a bad idea, but the lack of transparency and accuracy is just appalling. Or is it to confine whales into a bracket that you think will have a positive effect on your revenue? Maybe refer to it as S-Class wave in the future? ;-)
For those that aren't interested in competing at a high level anymore - how hard is it to allow them to get out? For those in Wave 3 that wants to compete, why restrict them to wave 2 only? One could suspect its for the sake of earnings (2 keys is double score for Scopely). Again you leave your players to speculations and conspiracies which could have been avoided. Communicate your intentions and let players have a real choice here.
Transparency promotes trust Scopely and I will let you in on a secret - I don't trust you at all.
Oh at for the record - this information is only shared on the forum. Where only a minority of your player base is present. So once again you leave most of your customers in dark which brings us back to the lack of transparency and accuracy.
Know what you talk about
It is a given that customer service staff must be skilled – having product knowledge is one such mandatory skill. Knowledgeable staff members are naturally enthusiastic and as humans we are more easily convinced by happiness and enthusiasm.
With the lack of open, transparent and regular official communication, Scopely have left their customers wondering. There is no knowledge on product shown and most of the changes done, leaves the players with the thought that Scopely employees doesn't play their own product.There is really no enthusiasm shown by the representatives the customers face. No interest in gathering feedback or even acknowledging that feedback is being used.
With the recent changes it's not obvious that you actually know how the mechanics affect game play or how they are linked. Or maybe you do but just have a different agenda than basic enjoyable game play at hand.
Accountability
Accountability means accepting responsibility for the outcome of your choices - get that Scopely? You cannot force others to take ownership for your decisions!!
It is not up to your players to keep the community informed. It is up to you as a company as you need to own up to your product and the service you provide.
So start acting like you own your decisions and setup proper communication lines IN THE GAME! Allow for active feedback from your customers and not funneled by a very small number of players. You have miles and miles of feedback from your customers but we never really get any response from you, until you have made a decision that most of us cannot understand because you have zero transparency.
I think the idea of a Player Council was brilliant until I saw how poorly you have implemented it, and how you seem to want to hold them accountable for your customer relations and even worse your decisions. I think it is completely unfair and extremely poor customer service that we are now relying on information from our fellow players.
And what is even worse - you leave them out to dry. Sure you had to own up to your S-Class decision by mentioning that the PC was against it but your explanation is worth nothing when we already know that another S-Class (or maybe even 2) is scheduled in the next event. How is that for being rare?
So dear Scopely, start owning up to your decisions and start communicating them so your customers can make choices. Don't give us half information like you can't stop a schedule when we know you can. Don't make S-Class out to be something rare, when we already figured out it isn't. No one like being played as a fool and right now you are leaving the impression that you look at your customers as fools.
You cannot present major game changing events on Friday night and then go on holiday and leave your entire community out hanging. It's not the first time so one has to wonder if you do this on purpose. It sure seems like you post stuff and then duck and hide. I am sure you are well aware of how most of your so-called changes are received by now but instead of owning up to it and be accountable, you leave it up to speculations.